


and I’ll wear out the words I love you

by Bugsquads



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: El writes YET ANOTHER proposal fic and no one is surprised, F/M, Marriage Proposal, its just fluff that’s all it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:05:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19718647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugsquads/pseuds/Bugsquads
Summary: ‘Because MJ deserves the world. Peter loves her so much that he’d propose to her in a subway station or a 7/11. But she deserves at least one historical monument’MJ and Peter make it to Paris seven years late, and right on time.





	and I’ll wear out the words I love you

**Author's Note:**

> Uhh I literally woke up at four a.m with this idea in my head so here - have my first post ffh fic! Hopefully more to come!
> 
> A whole ocean of thanks to Birdie for betaing!

Peter’s been planning this thing for so long that it’s hard to just casually suggest the trip to MJ, in conversation on a Sunday evening, sitting in the sun and drinking in the last dregs of the weekend.

“Paris.”

He's been thinking about the best way to raise this topic naturally for two hours. He realises this probably wasn’t the best way to go about it, judging by the frown crossing MJ’s features. She’s leaning on her elbows in the grass in the middle of the park, a backdrop of little kids and dog walkers and elderly couples strolling around. It’s late spring, they’re twenty-three, MJ has a smudge of strawberry ice cream on her chin. Life is good.

“It’s a city in Europe. Capital of France,” MJ provides, as if they’re back in high school and this was a warm up question for Academic Decathlon.

“Yeah, I- I know what Paris _is_ ,” Peter says, shuffling up a little further on his own elbows. “But would you want to go there? With me? This summer?”

“You don’t sound totally sure about that, nerd,” MJ smirks, reaching over the small distance between them to poke Peter between the ribs.

“Uh, no, I just...it’s an idea I had. That we could go to Paris. We never got to go, and we both have jobs now. I figure we deserve a vacation,” Peter’s pretty confident that he’s coming across as casual, and not like his entire future rests on MJ agreeing.

“Hmm,” she narrows her eyes at him.

Peter loves every single thing about MJ. He loves that she can’t help but tell the truth. He loves the way she organises her shirts by color in the top drawer of her dresser. He loves the way she takes her coffee, the way the keeps pencils behind her ear _just in case_ , and he loves the secret smile she shoots him after every time they kiss, even after seven years of kisses. But right now, in this deciding moment, the colors in her eyes popping in the golden hour sunshine, he is _less_ in love with her natural suspicion and determination to solve anything she dubs a mystery.

“Paris could be nice,” MJ declares, a full minute later. Peter lets out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding, beaming at the love of his life. He may have only been alive for twenty-three years, but it’s enough of a life to know that she’s it for him. Hell, he knew after sixteen.

“Yeah. It will be,” Peter nods, before leaning across to kiss her, brushing her hair away from her face with the hand he’s not using to steady himself on the ground.

It’s only ten minutes later, as they start to walk home, that Peter realises the magnitude of the situation. Because, sure, he’s been planning this for ages in his mind, has thought out every step of the trip, but now...now it’s real. Now he needs to _actually_ plan it, rather than it just happening inside his head.

Peter has never asked someone to marry him before, but now he has to face the possibility that MJ might actually say _no._ That this might be the wake up call she needs to realise she doesn’t actually want to spend the rest of her life with him.

“Peter. That’s irrational,” Ned tells him over video chat, hours later, in the low light of Peter and MJ’s tiny apartment as he whispers into his phone, MJ asleep in their bedroom one room away.

They’ve lived here for a year now, this minuscule corner of New York City, with its faulty air conditioning on the eleventh floor, and a temperamental cat that belongs to a neighbor that spends its days sleeping on their fire escape and growling at random points in the night. The rent is much too high. Sometimes it takes five tries to unlock the front door.

But it’s theirs. They’ve decorated with plants in all hues of green, framed photos of fragments of their lives, pictures with friends and family members and vacation spots and each other. The city lights sparkle outside the window, uncovered by the broken blind which the landlord has been promising to fix for months. It’s peaceful, and _relatively_ safe, and most importantly it’s their home. No matter how awful of a day Peter’s had, he can come home to their corner of the universe. Home to her.

“It’s _not_ irrational, Ned. Think about it. It happens all the time!” Peter hisses, squeezing his phone so hard he can feel the metal starting to give way under his fingertips.

“Yeah, to people in like, loveless relationships. Not to you. You’re Peter and MJ. You’re a forever kind of deal,” Ned explains, from his kitchen nine blocks north. Peter can see Betty in the background making herself a midnight sandwich, humming quietly. She and Ned are currently sitting firmly at the ‘in a relationship’ status. Peter gives them three weeks before they’re broken up again - MJ says four.

“Yeah, except _are we_?” Peter’s panicking, voice rising an octave or seven.

“Yes. You are,” Ned nods.

“You really are,” Betty agrees, smooshing her sandwich together.

“Did you call Pepper yet?” Ned asks.

“Uh...no,” Peter shrugs, smiling a little helplessly, “I’ll do it tomorrow. This week. Probably. If she’s available.”

“C’mon, it’s just Pepper. What’s the worst that could happen? Call Morgan and have her ask if you’re so scared,” Ned suggests, only half-joking.

“I’m not scared _she’s_ going to say no. I’m scared this is going to lead to _MJ_ saying no,” Peter explains.

“Peter, _relax_. It’s love! Everything will work out exactly how it’s supposed to,” Ned says, cutting his eyes to Betty. Peter gets the impression he’s no longer talking about him and MJ.

“Babe, you’re _so right_ ,” Betty gushes, and Ned is _blushing._

Peter’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to stick around for the sickly sweetness of the next part, so he wraps up the call, turns off the dim yellow lamp and steps quietly into the bedroom. MJ gravitates towards him in her sleep as he slides into bed next to her, wrapped in the light floral of the fresh cream bed sheets, and Peter kisses her temple as he closes his eyes. Proposing might be terrifying, but he’s never been more certain about anything before.

Peter knows MJ better than he knows anyone, save maybe Ned, and he knows that big, public, romantic gestures are not her thing. He also knows that this is, hopefully, a once in a lifetime thing for both of them. That it’s got to be special. So he’s walking a fine line between them.

The idea for the proposal bloomed in his head slowly, like flowers turning their face towards the sun. Some of them came from things he’s learned about MJ across the almost ten years of knowing her, snippets of conversations they’ve had or pop culture references she’s made. Some of them came from movies or TV shows, an old episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine from a rewatch they were doing a year ago. Other things came to him in dreams, or sitting in the lab at work. And somehow, they all link up in a bizarre collage to make something he hopes will be good enough for her. (Because she deserves the world. He loves her so much that he’d propose to her in a subway station or a 7/11. But she deserves at least one historical monument.)

Even though it’s basically all planned in his head, when it comes to the actual physical planning of the proposal, there are some questions to address first. Like, Pepper can secure the Eiffel Tower for them, sure, but it’s going to be easiest at either dawn, or late at night, so which would he prefer?

And choosing the ring. In theory, Peter has an image of it in his mind, knows the exact stone and cut he wants, knows it needs to be ethical, and not so expensive that it uses up a whole months’ paycheck. Because as much as he would _like_ to spend an entire months’ paycheck, as much as he thinks MJ is worth it, Peter knows that she would hate that. He can almost hear her giving him a thirty minute lecture on the irresponsibility of it, and on a woman’s place in society not being determined by the value of a shiny rock on her finger.

It’s May who finds the ring in the end, in a little antique store down a shady looking alley during her lunch break, calling Peter at work and excitedly babbling about having found _the one_. It takes three tries for Peter to understand what she’s saying, and then he’s rushing from his desk, almost tripping over his own feet to make it to the store.

The ring needs a polish and a resize, has a little dent on the side, but the deep black stone catches the light in just the right way. Peter can picture the ring on MJ’s left hand, weighs it in his own hand in the store and imagines how it would feel to link his fingers with hers whilst she has it on, the cool metal against his pinky finger. He buys it then and there with crumpled dollar bills from his back pocket. The salesman places it gently into a deep purple ring box, pressing it into Peter’s palm with a smile. Afterward, May takes him for ice cream.

The day before the trip is, somehow, the most nerve wracking for Peter. It feels like he’s standing right on the precipice of something, like everything is about to change. But it’s not, really.

Unless MJ says no.

Peter realises, several times a day, that she might say no, and has to stand still and find something to hold onto. He finds himself, on the day before the trip, mentally cataloguing every inch of their apartment, of the street outside, of her. Of the way her hair falls when she first gets out of bed, of the kiss she plants on his cheek, the way it feels to hold her hand, the way it feels to love her, and to know that she loves him back. Just in case it’s the last time.

“You doing okay there?” MJ asks, standing at the little kitchen table and folding laundry.

She looks beautiful, still wearing the oversized t-shirt she slept in, hair piled up on top of her head. Peter’s pretty sure the shirt was his once, something too big he got at a thrift store, but he can’t say for sure. That’s the thing about having interwoven lives for so long - reality and imagination sometimes overlap, blur from all of the years of memories accumulated in his brain.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’m just thinking about, uh, climate change,” Peter says, avoiding eye contact, choosing instead to rifle through the laundry pile to find the clothes he wants to take with him.

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Climate change doesn’t stop for our vacation, MJ,” Peter points out, focusing intently on the grey shirt he's folding.

“Yeah, no shit,” MJ comments, throwing a ball of socks at his head. Peter catches it one handed. “Loser,” she says, but the word is soaked in affection.

“Takes one to know one,” Peter hops the table in one clean sweep, gathers MJ in his arms and peppers her face in kisses until her half-hearted pleas for him to stop are buried in giggles.

Peter doesn’t think he’s ever heard MJ giggle around anyone but him (and he makes her giggle a _lot_ ). There’s no sound in the world that makes him happier than the bubbly sunshine of her laugh. Somehow, it makes everything seem right with the world, can calm him instantly even on the worst days, the kind he’d rather not remember. He’s pretty sure it’s MJ’s superpower, making him smile.

Peter knows that he really shouldn’t be telling that many people about the proposal. The more people who know, the more diluted the secret becomes. The more chance MJ has of finding out. The more people he has to face after she says _no._ But he can’t help it. The mixture of excitement and nerves makes the secret spill out of him, the words leaving his lips before he’s properly evaluated his decision to tell them.

The day before the trip, he finalises plans on the phone to Pepper for an hour, freaks out over coffee at May’s for another ninety minutes, tells the man at the corner store down the street from his apartment, video chats with Shuri to ask for advice (she spends twenty minutes spamming him with freshly made memes, and he’s pretty sure she’s the least helpful person he’s spoken to, until he realises she’s successfully melted away his anxiety for a while).

He tells Miles in the darkness of a rooftop, on one final patrol together before Peter leaves the city in Miles’ hands for the next five days, defending it alone for the first time. Miles is sixteen, all wide eyes and fast movements, a coiled spring. They’re both anxious about what the next few days have to bring, but they stop two muggings and an ATM robbery and wind up the night drinking milkshakes on a roof, both feeling considerably better about the new territory they’re about to enter.

“Call me after she says yes,” Miles tells Peter, poised on the edge of the rooftop, illuminated by the neon sign of the 24-hour diner across the street.

“ _If_!” Peter insists.

“ _When_!” Miles replies, just as determined. “She looks at you the same way my mom looks at my dad. It’s gross, but kind of sweet at the same time. So she’ll say yes,” Miles assures him, flipping backwards off of the roof before Peter can say another word.

Their flight to Paris leaves early, the kind of stupid early morning where nothing quite feels real. MJ, eyes dusty with sleep, clutches a cardboard cup in one hand, the largest one the little off-brand airport coffee kiosk had, filled to the brim with coffee, the other hand linked with Peter’s, fingers tangled together as he pulls them towards their gate. MJ sleeps on his shoulder for the first hour of the flight, nose pushed against his neck, his arm losing all feeling around her waist. They spend the rest of the flight watching documentaries about Parisian murderers, or talking, or staring out of the window, watching the way the clouds look like solids beneath them, reflecting the sun so brightly that they almost hurt to look at.

Eventually, they touch down on French soil, taking the train into the heart of the city they didn’t quite make it to all those years ago. They get lost amongst the sweet smelling air from the open-fronted cafes, lilting music from street performers, the close warmth of the air, snippets of conversation from the groups of people swarming around them. They hold hands and drink in the city of light, watch as the sky grows darker and the restaurants fill up, laughter and champagne, friends and families and lovers. They make it to the hotel, order way too much room service, and eat it on the queen sized bed in the ridiculous suite which Pepper’s paying for, fall asleep with the window cracked open and the sounds of the street below filling up the blank spaces in the room.

Peter, day one in Paris, alternates between sheer panic and the time in between where he forgets that he’s going to propose tonight. Those moments are few and far between, and grow from holding on tight to the bars on the metro, watching MJ eating a croissant the size of her head, and listening to the ebbs and flows of her voice as she gives in-depth commentary on the paintings in the Musee D’orsay. Jetlag catches up with them in the mid-afternoon, so they nap in a heap on the most comfortable queen sized bed Peter’s ever encountered. His eyes close to the rise and fall of MJ’s chest against his own, half on top of him, the soft fabric of her sweater against his forearm.

MJ’s taking a shower when Peter wakes up, immediately feeling panicky without knowing why, until he remembers he’s _hours_ from proposing to her. He digs through his backpack, sleep still clouding his brain, and pulls out the smooth purple box, holds it in the palm of his hand and marvels at how something so small is going to say so much. He flips the box open, looking at the curve of the newly polished ring, resized after a very tense ten minutes of sizing MJ’s finger in her sleep. Peter knows he’s supposed to have amazing spider-like reflexes - which he’s more than capable of using when fighting for the fate of the universe - but trying to measure your girlfriend’s ring finger in the middle of the night without waking her is, it turns out, a whole different matter.

The water in the shower shuts off, and Peter drops the ring back into his backpack, takes a deep breath and tries to make himself look casual.

It doesn’t work.

“Why are you smiling like that?” MJ asks, the second she’s out of the bathroom, wrapped in a fluffy hotel robe.

“What? I’m not smiling like anything, it’s just my face.”

“No it’s not,” she sits on the bed beside him, scanning him carefully.

“I’m just...happy to be here. With you. I’m happy we finally made it to Paris.”

She pauses for a second, and Peter’s convinced she’s going to press him more, but then: “you’re such a cheeseball,” she smiles, leaning over to kiss him.

They don’t have dinner reservations for tonight, though Pepper has compiled a list of twelve fancy restaurants _and_ offered to pay for them to eat at any one of them, and May had suggested a couple of places she and Ben had eaten at the times they’d visited the city together. Peter almost takes one of them up on a recommendation, but something stops him.

He wants this night to be theirs. He doesn’t want to eat at some place that’s going to remind him of somebody else. He wants to find someplace new, wants for him and MJ to carve out their own path, their very own landmarks. Maybe they’ll come back and retrace their steps for this day on their tenth wedding anniversary. Maybe, someday, if they’re lucky, they’ll bring their children here, show them the city, the museum of the history of them.

They find a tiny pizza place, slices big enough to fill up the paper plates they’re served on. There’s a jukebox in the corner, the chairs and tables mismatched in size and colour, the lights low and the pizza freshly made. They eat their dinner, share a giant glass of house wine, and re-emerge onto the streets a little giggly.

They take the Métro to the Eiffel Tower, and MJ knows where they’re going, agreed quickly to Peter’s fake casual suggestion of going up high, looking down to recognise the shapes of the city bathed in pinpricks of light. See the way the landscape changes in the dark, lit by car headlights and apartment bedrooms and offices open late.

“It looks closed?” MJ questions as they get close, walking through the cooling streets. She tugs Peter closer to the signage. “Maintenance. It’s closed ‘till tomorrow morning I guess.” She sounds disappointed, turns to look at Peter.

“Oh, yeah. I saw that on their website but, uh, Pepper pulled some strings for us. We can go up,” he pulls her towards the tower, past the flocks of tourists taking pictures around it, the stoic policemen and collections of beggars.

“We can just...go up?” MJ sounds doubtful, pausing in front of the elevator entrance.

“Yeah! Pepper suggested it. Just us, no fighting the crowds.”

“Peter, you’re being weird. You’ve been acting weird this whole week, actually,” she pulls her hand loose, crosses her arms over her chest. She’s wearing a pretty blue dress, kind of similar in style to the one she wore all those years ago in Prague. Peter always thinks that MJ looks beautiful, but there’s something about her in pretty dresses on dark summer evenings that makes his heart skip a beat.

“MJ, c’mon. You trust me, right?” He needs this to work. He needs her to trust him for ten more minutes. Just ten. Ten more minutes before all of this can be over. One way or another.

“You know I do,” she says, her eyes finding his. They’re vulnerable and uncertain. Peter smiles, trying to convey promises with his expression.

“So, let’s go up. Just _trust_ me.” Peter finds her hand again, gently tugs her over to the security guard, shows his ID, and steps into the elevator with her.

Peter fiddles with the cool plastic of his drivers license, his year of birth and actual age a mismatch, never going to correlate again. He wonders, as he often does, how different his life would be if it weren’t for The Blip. He’d be twenty-eight, an age that still seems distant right now, something he doesn’t need to worry about. The Blip pushed everyone in his class who had disintegrated closer together, made them trust and rely on each other more, stick together. Most importantly, it had pushed him and _MJ_ closer together. Peter has no idea if that would have happened without The Blip, or whether they would have just carried on being kind-of-friends. Whether he would be twenty-eight and living in a, hopefully larger, apartment with MJ, or alone, or with some faceless stranger. Whether he’d see MJ, through social media posts or word of mouth, falling in love with somebody else. Whether it would hurt like the idea of it does now, or whether it would be just another social media post he scrolls past on the train to work. Peter doesn’t know which idea is worse.

The elevator jolts to a stop at the top. He shakes himself back to reality, to his beautiful girlfriend frowning at an information panel on the side of the elevator.

They step out, wind whistling around them, sounds amplified with height, the city below a patchwork of sparks, a tapestry of noise. They stand at the edge, holding onto the railing.

“Definitely a mind control instrument,” MJ decides, looking up to the very top of the tower.

“One-hundred percent,” Peter agrees.

It feels fitting, Peter thinks, to do this some place so steeped in history. Somewhere so many proposals have doubtlessly happened before. Peter wonders if it’s possible, against all science and logic, for feelings to leave a physical mark. For all of the love shared up here to seep into the metal, for it to bury itself in the very bones of the people who visit.

They stand in silence, taking in the view, watching circling birds and the orange lights of airplanes. MJ takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for a second, and Peter takes one last look at her before he asks. Then, he summons all of the courage he can, wishes for good luck harder than he’s ever wished for it before, and quietly slips his backpack off, digging through it with one hand for the cool textured box. Once he finds it, he gently drops the bag. As if right on cue, MJ opens her eyes again.

“Hey, MJ?”

“Yeah?”

Peter doesn’t have a speech prepared. He’d considered writing out everything he’s ever felt about her onto three-by-five flash cards in smudgy black pen, showing drafts to May and Ned and refining it into something flawless.

But it didn’t feel right.

Nothing about their relationship has been as carefully scripted or to-plan as that. And it’s been pretty perfect so far.

So, Peter swallows, takes a breath, finds her eyes with his, her hand with his free one, finds courage and love and seven years of making her smile. Because that’s what his life is now. It’s making her smile, and the less significant moments in between.

He shakes off his nerves. She’s MJ, and she’s his, and he is hers. He knows that she sings in the shower and that she likes bubblegum flavored toothpaste. They sat next to each other in freshman English, danced together at senior prom. She’s his past, she’s his future, she’s his everything.

“Peter? What’s up?” MJ asks, snapping her fingers in front of his eyes.

“Would you wanna marry me?”

“Huh?”

Peter produces the box, flips it open with his thumb. He pauses for a second, looking down at the ring to check it's in place, as MJ draws in a sharp intake of breath. “ _Oh_!”

“Uh, you. MJ,” Peter tries again. “Do you want to marry me?”

“ _Peter!_ ” MJ gasps, pressing her free hand to her mouth. “Are you serious?” Muffled words. Sparkling eyes. Peter’s heart constricts in his chest, and he’s biting back a smile.

“Yeah, I’m serious,” he half laughs.

A beat. “Are you going to ask me properly?” She’s laughing too, dropping her hand from her face to his hand, covering the box with her palm.

“You want me to ask you _properly_?” MJ nods. “Oh okay, okay. I’m sorry,” he shuffles down until he’s on one knee, a tradition MJ told him once, a long time ago, that stemmed from knights. “MJ. Michelle. Michelle _Jones_. The love of my life. I… I want to share the rest of it with you. The rest of my life, I mean. And I know I don’t live the _safest_ life, I can’t promise you I’m going to live to the age of one-hundred. But I can promise you I’m going to love you till the end of it. And yeah, we’re still young. We’ve still got growing up to do, still got a lot left to figure out. I want to figure that out with you. I want to wake up next to you every morning. I want to go on adventures with you, to the other side of the world and to the grocery store. You’re my best friend, the best part of my life, and you make me want to be a better person, every day. So, uh...so, MJ, will you marry me?”

She pauses, tears clinging to her eyelashes. “I _knew_ you were planning something!”

“Yeah,” Peter breathes a sigh of relief, “you were right. You usually are.”

“Yeah,” she nods, a tear tracking its way down the side of her nose. “Yes.”

“‘Yes’ as in you’re usually right, or ‘yes’ as in...as in, you’ll marry me?”

“‘Yes’ as in I’ll marry you, idiot!”

“Oh! Okay. Okay. Thank God,” Peter laughs a little nervously, jumping back to his feet. He slips the ring onto MJ’s ring finger, kisses her softly on the lips, and just like that, she’s his fiancée.

“Love you,” Peter whispers into her hair, pulling her in for a hug, holding her close like she might break if he lets go.

“Love you too,” she dips her head and rests her chin on his shoulder, swaying a little to music that only exists inside of their minds.

The ring matches her necklace perfectly, the flower he planned to give her right here seven years earlier. They made it here in the end. They just took the long way around.

A security guard takes a picture of them later, his arms around her, her left hand held out to the camera. Peter texts it to everyone he loves, to Ned and May, to Miles and Shuri, to Happy and Pepper, to _Betty_ , just ‘cause.

Then, they walk back to the hotel, fingers intertwined along the banks of the Seine, getting lost amongst the crowd, talking about everything and nothing, things that matter and things that never have.

It’s summer in Paris, they’re twenty-three. MJ has a ring on her left hand.

Life is good.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me about these nerds on twitter @bugsquads!


End file.
